The difference between distributed and microservices

The difference between distributed and microservices lies in definitions and concepts, design ideas, granularity and complexity, service boundaries and autonomy, technology stacks and deployment methods, etc. Detailed introduction: 1. Definition and concept. A distributed system is a system composed of multiple independent computers or computer networks. These computers communicate and coordinate through message passing to jointly complete a certain task or provide a certain service. The microservice architecture is An architectural style that splits an application into a set of small, independent services, each of which can be independently deployed, scaled, and managed, collaborate through lightweight communication mechanisms, and more.

Distributed and microservices are two design ideas commonly used in current software architecture. They can both be used to build complex application systems, but in the implementation method There are some differences in aspects such as , granularity and application scenarios. The following will compare distributed and microservices from different perspectives to help better understand the differences between them.

1. Definition and concepts:

- Distributed system: A distributed system is a system composed of multiple independent computers or computer networks that communicate and coordinate through message passing. Complete a task or provide a service.

- Microservice architecture: Microservice architecture is an architectural style that splits an application into a set of small, independent services. Each service can be independently deployed, expanded and managed through lightweight communication mechanism for collaboration.

2. Design idea:

- Distributed system: The design idea of ​​a distributed system is to split a large system into multiple subsystems, each subsystem is responsible for different functions. Communicate and collaborate through message passing and remote calling to achieve system scalability and high availability.

- Microservice architecture: The design idea of ​​microservice architecture is to split an application into multiple small services. Each service can be independently deployed, expanded and managed through asynchronous communication and API calls. Collaborate to achieve loose coupling and maintainability of the system.

3. Granularity and complexity:

- Distributed system: The granularity of a distributed system is relatively large. Each subsystem may contain multiple modules or components, and communication between subsystems and collaboration are more complex, and issues such as distributed transactions, consistency, and fault tolerance need to be considered.

- Microservice architecture: The granularity of microservice architecture is relatively small. Each service is usually only responsible for a specific business function. The communication and collaboration between services are relatively simple and can be independently developed, tested, deployed and Extension to facilitate collaborative development and rapid iteration of the team.

4. Service boundaries and autonomy:

- Distributed system: In a distributed system, the boundaries between subsystems are relatively blurred, and there may be shared databases, shared caches, etc. Negotiation and coordination are required between subsystems to ensure data consistency and reliability.

- Microservice architecture: In the microservice architecture, each service has clear boundaries. Each service can have its own database, cache and other resources. Services communicate through APIs. Each service All are autonomous and can be developed, tested, deployed and expanded independently.

5. Technology stack and deployment method:

- Distributed system: In distributed systems, RPC (remote procedure call), message queue and other technologies are usually used to implement communication between subsystems Communication and collaboration can be deployed in a centralized or distributed manner.

- Microservice architecture: In microservice architecture, RESTful API, message bus and other technologies are usually used to achieve communication and collaboration between services. Each service can be independently deployed in different containers or virtual machines. , you can use containerized deployment or cloud-native deployment.

To sum up, distributed systems pay more attention to the scalability and high availability of the overall system, while microservice architecture pays more attention to loose coupling and maintainability between services. Distributed system design is more suitable for large-scale complex systems, while microservice architecture is more suitable for agile development and rapid iteration scenarios. In actual applications, the appropriate architecture can be selected based on specific needs and system scale.

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